We can appreciate that most of our readers have never been privy to the negotiating practices of teachers unions.

Most negotiations are conducted behind closed doors and it isn’t until everyone is smiling or an arbitrator is summoned that the details become public.

With that in mind and with some knowledge of what does go on behind those closed doors, we direct your attention to a court case recently decided in California. There, as reported by The Washington Post, “a Los Angeles judge struck down teacher tenure and other California laws that offer job security to educators, a decision that is expected to trigger widespread challenges of teacher job protections nationwide.”

In a nutshell, a group of students challenged a common union notion that when it comes time to cut budgets and lay off teachers, it is “last hired first fired.”

The students argued this process, the product of tenure, was depriving them of the best and brightest teachers — and a quality education.

And the court agreed.

Here in New Hampshire we haven’t seen much ado about “last hired first fired,” although it is rare to see a teachers union contract that doesn’t in some way recognize tenure.

That said, we have long found it interesting that quite often when union representatives and school boards sit down there is little talk of student needs. There is we — the teachers — and you — the School District. In fact, we once heard a superintendent wonder out load at the absence of such concerns by his district’s local teachers’ union.

This is not to say teacher quality is out of sight out of mind when unions negotiate. It just seems to be on the wrong end of the totem pole.

Historically, unions negotiate contracts that allow for step increases. Teachers get these raises after taking courses or earning degrees related to their job duties at a particular school, which often helps pay for those courses.

But unions also frequently demand automatic pay raises — called cost of living adjustments.

The knock on COAs is that they reward employees for simply showing up for work — something assumed in a basic job description.

Thankfully, voter blow-back has resulted in contracts which often include some degree of merit pay — based on performance but not necessarily that of their students.

We don’t expect the wave of court cases predicted by The Washington Post to hit New Hampshire very soon, if at all.

But we do hope the attention it brings to teacher tenure will reignite public discussions about how we measure the quality of education in our local schools and tie it to student output — something that makes unions nervous.

We have always been struck by how well known the good teachers are in a school district. Talk to students and/or recent graduates and there is often a quick consensus.

But you wouldn’t necessarily be able to pick out these best teachers by looking at a district’s wage report.

While it may appear we are union bashing, that is not our intent. We understand you can’t draw a straight line between pay and teacher quality. But right now our sense is that the line that connects the two is so vague at times as to be non-existent.

For our tax money, we would hope the California court case encourages local school boards to draw as straight a line as possible between pay and quality. We want to see good teachers rewarded through larger paychecks. But in order to do that, teachers must be held accountable for both student success and failure. The former earns teachers more, the latter earns them the door.